Texas Democrats Won’t Run for Three of the Partisan Statewide Offices, Making it Easy for Libertarians and Greens to Meet Vote Test in 2014

Texas has four ballot-qualified parties: Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green. Parties remain on the ballot by either polling 2% for Governor, or 5% for any statewide race. In 2014, there are three statewide partisan races in which no Democrat is running. This makes it virtually certain that both the Libertarian Party and the Green Party will poll over 5% for those races, and thus will be on the ballot in 2016.

The three statewide offices with no Democratic candidates this year are State Supreme Court seat 8; Court of Criminal Appeals seat 4; and Court of Criminal Appeals seat 9.

On another Texas topic, January 2, 2014, was the deadline for any unqualified party to tell the state if it intends to petition in 2014. The Texas Secretary of State’s office says the information as to whether any unqualified party filed that notice by the deadline won’t be known until Monday, January 6.

Texas has a straight-ticket device and I am afraid 40% of the voters will never even look at the entire ballot; they will just use the straight-ticket device and their eyes will never alight on those particular races. So the idea that a Libertarian or Green would get 40% is just not realistic.

And Rich Whitney of the Illinois Green Party got 10% for governor back in 2006. I think this year could get interesting, if enough voters are fed up enough with the Democrats and Republicans to give voting third party a try.

Do you mean in Texas, or the whole country? And what period of time? Obviously in U.S. history, there are many minor parties who won statewide races. But, when minor parties do win, it is almost always not a two-way race. It’s a paradox, but minor parties are far more likely to win a race like Governor or US Senator than a less important statewide race. And, it is virtually unheard of for one of the two major parties to fail to run for Governor.

Richard let’s make it the whole country and just go back to 1971 for two party statewide races involving a 3rd party candidate and a major party candidate. There has to be some success stories out there in the last 43 years.

Check out the Texas Super-state Parliament Election of 2014 which has been part of a unity building exercise since 1995.

Last year Texas Green Party POTUS candidate Rhett Smith [First Freedom] ran for MP Ron Paul’s [Republican] Congressional seat in San Antonio TX and now he running for Judge in the same district as a Libertarian.

Rhett is one of the best team players, he’s on our board with another member Ralph Hoffmann [Republican] who was the chair of the Republican Party county committee when Ron Paul first ran for Congress.

It’s a small world and our team is able to unite with team players. Cool people who understand a little about the nature of team psychology and who like the concept.